Steps
by LittleLinor
Summary: From the day he finds himself alone to the day he fights alone, Lucas moves forward.   Spoilers to the endgame, and general lack of coherence.


Some people say it's like dancing, but he's never danced, the kind of dance with two people and contact, so he can't really compare.

Instead, when he fights, Lucas feels almost like he's dreaming.

It's almost a contradiction. He feels everything acutely enough-the heat, the strain, the pain that reaches him sometimes. The speed of movement, how his increasingly hyper-aware senses catch every detail. There's nothing blurry about it, just sharp focus and rhythmical breathing, but what makes it dreamlike is the way all his senses meld into each other. How time and movement collapse around a conducting red thread: a flurry of moments and details losing themselves into one strangely continuous storyline that flows on its own logic until it abruptly ends and he is left panting and blinking coherence back into his head.

Fighting doesn't come easily, at first.

When chimeras first start appearing in the forest he freezes and nearly gets hurt, and it takes some time until Boney's presence at his side becomes a comfort and not a necessity. He wasn't made for this, people's attitudes still whisper to him. He is the softer twin, and so much like his mother, and he should be growing into that role, not roaming the forest and mountains like his absent father (that Flint, he used to be so reliable, what happened to him?). But with fewer and fewer people going there, the forest gradually becomes his domain, the place he goes to once his housekeeping activities are done. He goes there to see the Dragos. He goes there even once they're gone. He goes for clues, and for relatively quiet solitude, and so over time he masters it. Learns its pathways and where friendly and harmful animals both live, and the weaknesses of those who attack. He learns to gather eggs from slytherhens, and how to cook and hatch them. His eyes catch movements, and his ears learn to disociate sounds even from a complex background.  
>He doesn't learn speed, but he learns to be fast enough. And he grows, into his role and Hinawa's and Claus's and sometimes even Flint's, and one day he turns thirteen and is nearly as good with his stick as his father used to be with lumber.<p>

Fighting stronger creatures proves to be a variation on the same theme. He still avoids the ones he knows he would have to fight. For the others, he picks up a stronger weapon on the way. It's when he first fights humans that it finally settles into his bones.

It doesn't stop him. It's not necessarily harder. But when he finally pushes against another person's weapon, sees and feels their own motivations and tastes and hears their own breath into the fight... that's when those habbits become reflexes, part of him.

It doesn't stop him, because ever since he set out on those rail tracks he's been taken in a motion forward, one that hasn't stopped yet and isn't about to stop, not any soon. He has a goal to achieve, several goals, but it's not even about that anymore.

He's slow, and to go forward, instead of speed he has built momentum. An unstoppable wave that moves forward no matter what. It's both a means and a cause, but he doesn't fight it. He has nothing to pause or slow down for.

He fights.

There are more and more actual enemies in front of him. No longerjust creatures who just happen to be there, but people who target him, constructs sent after him. One parry, one spell melts into the next step, and he moves, the power released from the needles growing inside him.

When the masked man fights, he moves in the way Lucas feels. Movement, much faster than his, flashes of energy and great crashes of strength. He's forced to put his entire being into the fight, his body, psi and mind. He isn't alone in that fight, but he can still feel the link, the tension, the rhythm between them, where any break could mean death. He understands, just a bit.

That fight, that dance forward brings him all the way into the entrails of the earth. The power of the last needle pulses in his blood, stronger with every step. He hasn't stopped, and he has a final goal now, something precious to recover and something important to protect.

He lets the wave crash.

There is still momentum mixing with Claus's too fast movements. But when he draws his bat in that last battle, Lucas doesn't fight.


End file.
